New Test Predicts Breast Cancers Years Ahead!

(ePharmaNews) – Early detection of breast cancer holds extreme importance in decreasing mortality rates and cancer morbidity. Today, British scientists developed a new blood test that can diagnose breast cancer years ahead of its occurrence!

The study published yesterday in Cancer Research, and included 640 affected female and 741 healthy femal, all participated in previous studies beginning from 1992.

Blood samples had been drawn on-average three years before the participants were diagnosed with breast cancer, and those samples were screened for one of the genes suspected of being involved in this type of cancer.

The researchers found that the participants who had a high percentage of methylation on this gene had higher incidence of cancer by a factor of two, and that effect was more obvious in ladies over 60 year-old.

The importance of this study comes from the fact that it is the first one that monitored the changes in genes years before the incidence of cancer, which excludes the possibility that the cancer caused the changes.

The lead researcher, Dr. James Flanagan said, "We know that genetic variation contributes to a person’s risk of disease. With this new study we can now also say that epigenetic variation, or differences in how genes are modified, also has a role."

"We hope that this research is just the beginning of our understanding about the epigenetic component of breast cancer risk and in the coming years we hope to find many more examples of genes that contribute to a person’s risk. The challenge will be how to incorporate all of this new information into the computer models that are currently used for individual risk prediction."

Baroness Delyth Morgan, Chief Executive of Breast Cancer Campaign said, "Dr Flanagan’s research into epigenetics is so exciting because it suggests that there is every possibility that the risk of developing breast cancer could be decided many decades in advance. By piecing together how this happens, we can look at ways of preventing the disease and detecting it earlier to give people the best possible chance of survival."